Debate over the F-35 has been dominated in recent weeks by the plane's opponents. But supporters of basing the fighter jets at Burlington International Airport went on the offensive Wednesday.

Their tactics did not prove as creative or as colorful as the opposition's deafening F-35 noise simulation and the fudge-gifting event staged at Sen. Patrick Leahy's downtown office. The organizer and two prominent backers of the Green Ribbons for the F-35 campaign held a traditional press conference at the Main Street headquarters of the Lake Champlain Regional Chamber of Commerce.

The pro-F-35 speakers nevertheless made controversial claims that were met with skepticism from some of the reporters in attendance.

Chamber president Tom Torti argued, for example, that there's no validity to the case against the plane on the basis of the noise it makes. "We believe that's a red herring," he declared.

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Two months after he took on Gov. Peter Shumlin over a land deal gone sour, East Montpelier resident Jeremy Dodge says he's happy with an agreement he struck late Wednesday with the governor.

"It's a good deal," Dodge (pictured) says. "I got my property back and that's what I was looking for. I wasn't looking for anything else."

Shumlin, for whom the dispute represented the biggest political crisis of his two-and-a-half years in office, is also relieved to put the situation behind him, according to his lawyer.

"He's pleased that Jeremy Dodge and his family are pleased," says Jerome Diamond, Shumlin's attorney.

Faced with a looming tax sale prompted by $17,000 in unpaid taxes, Dodge sold his home and 16 acres to Shumlin, a neighbor, last November for $58,000. At the time, the property was appraised at $233,700, though a subsequent reappraisal reduced its value to $140,000. 

Nearly two months ago, as Dodge's July 15 deadline to move out of the house approached, he and his family told reporters Shumlin had taken advantage of him — and sought to nullify the agreement. They said the 54-year-old man lacked the mental capacity and legal representation to strike such a deal with an accomplished negotiator and real estate investor like Shumlin.

Both sides engaged high-powered attorneys, who spent the last month negotiating a resolution. Shumlin's team presented Dodge with several proposals and late Wednesday, as WCAX's Jennifer Reading first reported, the aggrieved neighbor agreed to one.

"An agreement has been reached in principle," says Dodge's attorney, Brady Toensing. "The details will be worked out in the next few weeks, but it involves Mr. Dodge buying back the property over the next five years."

Plattsburgh's "international" airport (PBG) remains much smaller than Burlington's, but economic-development officials on the New York side of Lake Champlain sure do dream big.

Direct flights from PBG to Caribbean vacation spots represent "the lowest-hanging fruit" potentially within the airport's reach, North County Chamber of Commerce chief Garry Douglas recently told the New York Times. And that might just be the first step in giving substantive meaning to the "international" part of the airport's title, Douglas added. 

The Times reported his suggestion that it might be feasible in the longer term to board flights from Plattsburgh to destinations such as London, Paris and Tel Aviv. That would be quite a leap from the handful of domestic destinations PBG currently serves.

But PBG clearly does expect to handle many more passengers in the coming years than the 150,000 or so who boarded flights there in 2012. A remote parking site with 1500 spaces — in addition to the 2000 already available — is scheduled to open in 2016, the Times said. That's the same year when Plattsburgh's terminal is due to complete an expansion that will triple its size.

PBG's ambitions hinge almost entirely on attracting additional traffic from Quebec. More than 80 percent of its passengers currently come from Canada — drawn in part perhaps by PBG's claim of being "Montreal's U.S. Airport."

You know there's, like, a whole world on the other side of Lake Champlain, right? Where you can canoe, eat, get an Airstream refurbished, eat, fight over environmental stuff and so much more? Well, there is. So make like Samuel de Champlain, and get crossing!

In other news this week ...

• Mary Alice McKenzie of the Burlington Boys and Girls Club wants to talk about gangs. Is Burlington ready to listen?
• Sewage plants overflow frequently into waterways where Vermonters recreate, but the volume of those spills remains a mystery.
• State prosecutors took the rare step of using a grand jury to charge a Winooski cop with assault for a recent shooting incident. Why did they do it? 
• And in Fair Game, Paul Heintz evaluates Shumlin's first term as chair of the Democratic Governors Association, looks into a possible ambassadorship for Vermont's biggest political fundraiser, notes our senior senator's Vermont fundraiser for D.C. donors and bids farewell to one of our own.

In this week's Fair Game, we brought you word of another big-money fundraiser for a member of Vermont's congressional delegation.

Sen. Patrick Leahy has invited out-of-town guests to Burlington to "experience the world-renowned beauty of Vermont at his Fall Foliage Retreat," according to the invitation.

The weekend fundraiser slated for September 27-29 will feature a Friday night reception, Saturday night dinner and Sunday brunch, according to Leahy political operative Carolyn Dwyer. The invite also promises a "Foliage day trip" — perhaps to the senator's famed Middlesex farm?

Anyway, here's the invite, in case you want to RSVP:

This isn't your only opportunity in the coming months to spend a cozy weekend with a member of the Vermont delegation. As we reported a few weeks ago, Congressman Peter Welch is holding a fundraiser for D.C. lobbyists and political action committee representatives at the Woodstock Inn in August. (If you're looking to comparison shop, here's what Welch's invite looked like.)

According to Dwyer, the fall foliage retreat is Leahy's first such fundraising event in Vermont. Typically, she says, he holds them in D.C. 

"The only difference from our perspective is rather than doing this event in D.C., we're bringing the business to Vermont and using the opportunity to showcase Vermont," she says. "Many other members [of Congress] do these sorts of events. We're not the first ones to do this."

Indeed.

Are you on Vermont politicians' fundraising lists? If so, feel free to forward similar invites our way (paul [at] sevendaysvt [dot] com) and we'll post them in this space. 

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) said Tuesday he welcomes a last-minute deal struck by Senate leaders to avert a major showdown over the institution's rules. 

But while Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) called the deal a "step forward," Vermont's junior senator said it was not enough to remedy the ills of "a seriously dysfunctional Senate."

The deal clears the way for confirmation votes on five of President Obama's long-stalled nominees, including the top jobs at the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Labor and the Consumer Financial Protection Board. In exchange, President Obama will withdraw two controversial nominees to the National Labor Relations Board and replace them with two others, who are expected to receive speedy confirmation.

As late as Monday night, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) had threatened to change the Senate's rules to ban filibusters against presidential nominations, unless Republicans agreed to confirm Obama's nominees.

Speaking on the Senate floor after the deal was struck, Sanders said the minority party's ability to scuttle legislation supported by a majority was "a perversion of democracy."

"While this agreement addresses the immediate need for the president of the United States to have his cabinet and his senior staff confirmed, this agreement today only addresses one symptom of a seriously dysfunctional senate," he said. "The issue that must now be addressed is how we create a procedure and a set of rules in the United States Senate which allows us to respond to the needs of the American people in a timely and effective way — something which virtually everybody agrees is not happening now."

Here's a video of Sanders' speech:

Sanders is scheduled to discuss his reaction to the deal in greater detail Wednesday on Vermont Public Radio's "Vermont Edition."

Danilo Lopez, the Mexican farm worker who became a cause célèbre for Vermont's undocumented farm laborers, won a reprieve in his deportation case today.

U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement granted Lopez (pictured) a "stay of removal" that will allow him to remain in the country at least another year. Lopez has been under threat of deportation since July 5, stemming from a 2011 traffic stop in which he and another farm worker here illegally were stopped by state police in Interstate 89.

Burlington-based advocacy group Migrant Justice issued a press release announcing the news. In it, Lopez is quoted as saying, "I've gotten such tremendous support during this campaign that we've made ICE change their mind. I feel very fortunate to have so much support — in particular from my community of farm workers who told me: 'We've got your back. We'll fight with  you.'"

Perhaps more importantly, Lopez also had support from Vermont's three-member congressional delegation; U.S.Sens. Patrick Leahy and Bernie Sanders and U.S. Rep. Peter Welch all wrote letters of support to ICE officials. Leahy asked Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to apply prosecutorial discretion to Lopez's case.

Migrant justice organizers Brendan O'Neill and Natalia Fajardo did not return calls seeking comment Tuesday afternoon.

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More than two years after then-Senate president pro tem Peter Shumlin loaned his gubernatorial campaign $275,000, the now-governor finally got his money back.

According to disclosure forms filed Monday with the secretary of state's office, Shumlin dipped into his sizable campaign war chest on January 3 to fully repay himself for three loans he made to get his campaign off the ground during the summer and fall of 2010.

"It's always been the plan to pay the loan back," explains Shumlin's campaign treasurer, Kate O'Connor. "Luckily, we found ourselves in the position to do so at the beginning of this year. The campaign doesn't want to carry a debt."

Indeed, after decisively defeating former state senator Randy Brock in November to win a second two-year term, Shumlin closed out the campaign season with more than $915,000 in the bank. After raising nearly $88,000 during the past six months and repaying the 2010 loans, the governor now finds himself with nearly $707,000 cash-on-hand. 

While it's not uncommon in Vermont for wealthy candidates to loan their own campaigns generous sums of money, it's rare to see a six-figure loan fully repaid. Typically, candidates who make such loans eventually forgive them — in essence, converting the loans into direct contributions — or they carry them forward indefinitely.

The F-35 remains "the right fit" for the Vermont Air Guard, its top officer declared on Thursday — one day after the Winooski city council voted unanimously to oppose local basing of the plane.

During a 90-minute press briefing at Camp Johnson in Colchester, Gen. Dick Harris (pictured) and other Air Guard officers disputed that the F-35 would be significantly louder than the existing fleet of F-16s.

They also challenged the assertion by Vermont medical experts that many local residents exposed to noise levels now produced by the F-16 will suffer negative health effects.

Unless Vermont is chosen to host up to two dozen F-35s, it appears at present that the Air Guard will be left without a mission within the next five to seven years, Harris added. As early as 2018, the F-16 will be withdrawn from operations in Vermont, the general said. "There is nothing hanging out there" as an alternative to the-F35 for the Green Mountain Boys, Harris added. The Air Guard facility at Burlington International Airport will not be included in an Air Force program to extend the lifespan of the F-16, he told reporters.

Winooski’s city council voted 4-0 Wednesday against basing F-35 fighter jets at Burlington International Airport. The council will formally request that the Air Force take Vermont out of consideration for this round of basing decisions for the next-generation warplane.

The vote came after an hour of discussion by councilors before an audience of 30 people who came to watch the deliberations, virtually all of whom were opposed to basing the jets at the Vermont Air National Guard facility. On Monday, Winooski residents attending a public forum voiced overwhelming opposition to the basing plan. The council wasn’t accepting any additional public comments Wednesday.

The council spent much of Wednesday's meeting piecing together a message to the Air Force using the framework of two documents it submitted last year in response to an environmental impact statement that ranked Burlington as a preferred basing location. It was unclear for much of Wednesday's meeting whether the council would simply submit an updated version of its previous comments — which were hesitant about but not outright opposed to the F-35 — or draft new ones.

The crowd erupted into applause, though, after Councilor Seth Leonard introduced language that took a clear stand.

Leonard read from a prepared document what he hoped the council would say: “In the interest of protecting the public health, quality of life, and economic rights of its citizens, the City of Winooski resolves that the Burlington Airport be removed from consideration for the current basing of F-35 fighter jets.”